Win7 Handy RunAs Shortcut

2010, Jul 01    

Maybe I’m just late in the game on this one, but I thought I would share this incredibly useful Win7 shortcut when running things as a different user. This really only applies when you’re on a Win7 computer bound to a domain, but read on and enjoy …

When running something as a different user in Win7, you are prompted, as shown:


Well, normally if I wanted to run something as my local Admin account, I would have to specify my Computer Name, as shown:

(Notice, this causes the Domain to automatically change.)

This is fine and dandy, but I was messing around last night and was a little annoyed cause I couldn’t remember my Computer Name off the top of my head. I actually was just goofing around and discovered that Win7 understands dot (.) syntax, as shown:


Maybe all the VB scripting that I’ve been doing lately played a part in this discovery. Either way, it’s going to save me a lot of time in the future! I hope you all find it equally as useful!

For those who think that just typing Administrator will do the trick…

Not when the Domain is specified (because you’re logged into a domain user) like in the previous images. If you do that, it’ll go for DomainAdministrator, possibly resulting in the following response:


Note: I did check in XP SP3 and it does NOT work. I have not tried Vista. Also, Computer Names and Domains in the screenshots have been changed to protect the innocent.

Demonstrated on: Win7 Enterprise 64 bit